


tell me, am i dreaming?

by thoughtsareconstellations



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Angst, Illness, Injury, M/M, Some Fluff, i wrote this in like two days be kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 05:57:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7347889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsareconstellations/pseuds/thoughtsareconstellations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summons came as an invitation: Nothing should honour Us more than the presence of Our Brother King of Vere a fortnight hence. It was not the handwritten notes Laurent had come to expect from Akielos: I miss you. The summers are pleasant in Kesus. Come join me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tell me, am i dreaming?

**Author's Note:**

> written as a birthday present for the wonderful @maledictius. i'm so sorry.

The summons came as an invitation: Nothing should honour Us more than the presence of Our Brother King of Vere a fortnight hence. It was not the handwritten notes Laurent had come to expect from Akielos. I miss you. The summers are pleasant in Kesus. Come join me. He found this journey to Ios tedious and dusty, even with such comforts as could be provided on short notice; he travelled from Ravenel and not Arles, at least.

Only thanks to this he arrived in Ios three days early, and found the city shrouded in silence. There was no grand welcome, no ranks of Akielon soldiers lining the streets. The guards at the palace gates nodded at the Captain of Laurent’s escort and waved them through without question or ceremony. In the courtyard, Nikandros waited for them with his hands clasped tight. ‘Your Highness.’

Laurent slid from his saddle onto the cobblestones. ‘Nikandros.’

The man bowed. ‘Welcome to Akielos. There are squires to escort you to your chambers.’

Laurent fixed narrowed eyes on him. A cold weight settled in his stomach. ‘What has he done?’

Nikandros met his gaze. His eyes were dark and almost bruised from lack of sleep. ‘Surely Your Highness wishes to take some refreshment first?’ He flinched when Laurent’s hand wrapped around his arm.

‘What. Has. He. Done?’

 

Damen knew he had been careless. The assassin had caught him off-guard, unarmed but for a single dagger, and had not even had the courage to confront him. Damen was saved by his nervous horse, and the arrow pierced only his shoulder and not his heart. He was saved again by his instinct to cling on to the saddle despite the horse’s best efforts to be rid of him; he remembered how he had given the stable boy a fright, tumbling onto the cobbles and taking the boy with him, and then darkness.

It was dark now, although he was sure he was awake. The physicians insisted on keeping the shutters closed even at night so no light or wind disturbed him, and the air in the room had grown hot and stale. The wound in his shoulder throbbed with each beat of his heart, and beads of cold sweat collected on his forehead.

A week, now, since the attack? Two? He wasn’t sure.

He remembered the physicians removing the arrow. They had hoisted him up the stairs of the palace first, away from open skies and hidden archers, and he had protested that he could walk. Three people had restrained him while they sawed away at the shaft, and they had given him a stick to bite onto that his teeth snapped in half. Now they waited until the fever had him firmly in its grips before they moved him, or changed the bandages, because once he had almost broken a boy’s nose.

In moments like this, when the air in the room caressed his skin with a cool if imaginary breeze and his mind at least seemed clear to him, he wondered who had sent the assassin. He knew Nikandros had taken matters of government into his own hands, so he tried not to worry about affairs of state. Nikandros was a good man, and loyal to Akielos  
from the depth of his heart. He would keep Damen’s people safe.

There were horses in the courtyard, many of them. That was unusual. The white city had been quiet since he had been shot, so quiet he could hear from his sickbed in the palace. Could he smell the horses, from up here? No, he couldn’t – his mind was playing tricks again. He would be worse, soon; an hour, maybe less, and he would forget himself.  
Footsteps in the corridors. Bare, unornamented corridors, white walls and white floors and shuttered windows. At least two people, approaching. It must be the physicians, coming to prod at his injury and wrap his shoulder in foul-smelling potions. They were too early. He was still himself, for now.

The door swung inward. Damen closed his eyes.

‘Tell me, Nikandros,’ he said, heavily. ‘Am I dreaming yet?’

He could hear the smirk in Laurent’s voice. ‘Hello, lover.’

 

He looked awful. He was too thin, too pale, too limp between the sheets; he was not Damen. A ghost, maybe. ‘Am I dreaming yet?’ he asked, with a voice like a thousand rusty swords being drawn at once.

Laurent forced a smile. He did not think Damen heard what he said before he slipped away. He stepped closer and relied on Nikandros keeping up. ‘I want to know who did this. And then I want them dead.’

‘Of course, Your Highness.’

‘Do you know?’

‘We found the man, Your Highness. He refuses to tell us who paid him.’

Laurent exhaled. ‘I will speak to him.’ He forced the edge out of his voice. Damen would say: It is not Nikandros’ fault. He trailed his fingertips over the back of Damen’s hand lying on the covers. His skin was burning hot.

‘He will not wake for a while,’ Nikandros said.

Laurent nodded. ‘Poison? Yes, I thought so.’ There was blood on the bandages covering Damen’s shoulder. His breath came in heaving gasps.

Nikandros said: ‘It has been three weeks.’

‘Send me my physician. I will wait.’ 

The room was too hot. Laurent reckoned if he opened the shutters and stood between the window and the bed, even the most carefully aimed poison arrow would have to go  
through him first. He found a pitcher of water and a linen cloth, and dabbed the sweat from Damen’s face, one stroke at a time. If he had been ill for three weeks, they must have sent for Laurent the day it happened.

Damen said something in his sleep, a mumble of sounds that could have been Akielon, could have been Veretian. His eyes looked bruised, like Nikandros’, and his skin stretched tight over his cheekbones, but his mouth was the same as it had been, full and wide but chapped from thirst. Laurent’s hand moved to push a curl of dark hair away. He realised he was shaking, trembling with fury. This was not an injury of war, where these things happened, or an illness which could not have been prevented. Someone had done this, with deliberate cruelty – only a coward poisoned a weapon meant to kill.

He looked away. The man on the bed was not Damianos, King of Akielon; he was not even Damen. The man on the bed was almost a ghost. He was not quite dead because he still breathed and his heart was beating, but all the strength had gone from his body, all the raw power usually radiating from every inch of him drained and sucked away by blood loss and fever.

‘Your Highness.’ Paschal slipped into the room, unassuming and quiet. He inhaled sharply when he took in the scene. ‘Poison?’

‘Yes.’

Paschal grimaced. ‘If they know what kind, I can try.’

Laurent nodded, and walked away. He scared a servant into showing him to the assassin’s cell –no slaves in the palace anymore, Damen had seen to that – and found a man chained to the floor, still dressed in what he must have worn for the attempt on the King’s life. The man looked up at him with unconcealed terror in his eyes.

‘What did you use,’ Laurent said. There was no reply, so he repeated himself. He stepped closer and took hold of the man’s chin with one hand, yanking him upright. ‘You will tell me what poison you used,’ he said, ‘and who paid you to do it, and then, maybe, you will die quickly.’

A half hour later, Laurent climbed the stairs to Damen’s chambers, trying to school his expression. He passed a small courtyard, too private and out of the way to be anything but a place for lovers’ trysts, and washed his hands in the courtyard. The flowers were in full bloom and a bird sang, concealed in the shrubbery. 

There were guards at the door to the sickroom, two Akielon squires and a Veretian soldier. They stepped aside to let him pass. The room smelled of blood and sweat, like a battlefield, and decay, like a mortuary. Paschal’s assistant was bent over the bed, trying with all his weight to keep his patient still. The King of Akielos was struggling in his fever dreams.

Laurent tapped his shoulder and sent him away. Damen’s hand felt too large in his own. ‘Quickrot,’ he told Paschal.

The physician wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘I thought so; you can tell from the colour of the wound, here.’ He lifted the linen covering Damen’s shoulder. Laurent did not flinch. There was a blueish sheen to the skin around the injury. When he looked up again, Paschal almost reached for him.

‘I can deal with quickrot,’ he said. ‘If we are not too late, he will survive.’

Laurent nodded. ‘What do you need?’

They needed Damen awake. ‘I have an antidote. If I misjudge the dose, it will kill him faster than the quickrot would. He has to be awake and talk to me.’

Nikandros stood in the doorway – no, he leaned. Almost faltered. ‘It will be hours before he wakes,’ he said.

‘Then I will wait.’

‘Of course, Your Highness.’

 

They had closed the shutters again. Damen thought there had been sunshine at some point. His shoulder ached. Someone was holding his hand. He turned his head, every vertebrae protesting, and closed his eyes again. Even in almost-darkness, even against white sheets, Laurent shone like a beacon in a stormy night. He had not been dreaming, then.

Laurent slept with his upper body sprawled across the bed, still half-sitting in his chair. The laces on his wrist trailed open just enough to reveal a hint of gold under the fabric; he was breathing deeply.

‘Laurent.’ 

Within seconds, Laurent was upright again, every limb back under control. Damen missed it already, the softness that Laurent permitted only in sleep, or lovemaking. He wanted to reach out, to ease the tension from his shoulders, run his fingers through his hair. But he was tired, too tired to move…

Laurent watched him for a moment. ‘You are an idiot,’ he said. His hand tightened around Damen’s.

‘It was an ambush.’

‘It was an assassination.’ 

‘I am not dead.’

‘Yet. Idiot. Do your physicians not know how to treat poisons? No, clearly not. They will have to learn.’

‘Akielons…’ Speaking was difficult – it took up so much air. ‘Do not use. Poison.’ He dragged in a breath of tepid air.

‘Clearly, they do now. Do you know quickrot? You should have been dead a week ago. If you weren’t such a giant animal, you would be.’ Slowly, deliberately, Laurent raised Damen’s hand to his lips and kissed it. His lips were cool against Damen’s skin. ‘Paschal has an antidote.’

The antidote had to be administered a drop at a time, and every single one sent arrows of searing agony through Damen’s shoulder. His injured arm was strapped to his body so he wouldn’t move; Laurent pressed his other hand to the bed with an iron grip. Through the haze of pain and fever and exhaustion, Damen tried not to struggle too much for fear of breaking him.

After each drop, the physician would ask: ‘Is it cold?’

The first four times, Damen had said ‘Not yet.’ Now he gritted his teeth and shook his head so he wouldn’t scream.

Then icy calm spread through his shoulder, and he sank back onto the mattress. His vision blurred.

From somewhere through the fog, Paschal said: ‘Enough.’

 

‘If he lives through the night, he will recover,’ Paschal said. ‘I assume you will stay, Your Highness?’

‘Yes.’

‘Make sure to eat something.’

The only sound in the room was that of Damen’s laboured breath, and Laurent’s own heartbeat drumming in his ears. He had ordered heavy curtains to be hung from the windows, enough to obstruct an archer’s view but still let in light and air. The breeze slowly dispersed the acrid smell of illness and medicine. Laurent had to force himself not to look at Damen’s shoulder; there were no bandages now and the sight was enough to twist his stomach.

‘You’re… still here.’

Laurent’s thumb traced circles on the back of Damen’s hand. ‘Of course.’

Damen sighed. ‘It’s cold,’ he said, although he was still feverish.

‘It won’t be for long. You’ll be better in the morning.’ If he is alive in the morning.

‘Hmmm. Why are you here?’ He sounded better, Laurent thought, less like rattling chainmail. 

‘You sent for me,’ he said. 

‘Did I? I must have.’ Damen trailed off, his lashes fluttering as he drifted back to sleep. ‘I am glad you are with me,’ he muttered, finally, and Laurent had to avert his eyes and grit  
his teeth.

 

Damen woke once in the night, as if coming up for air from a very deep pool, and found that Laurent was still watching him, eyes shining in the light of a single lamp.

‘Sleep,’ he said, his master again, and Damen obeyed.

When the sun crept into the room, Laurent was speaking to Nikandros in muffled tones, his fingertips resting lightly on the inside of Damen’s forearm. Both of them fell silent when Damen moved, straining against the straps still restraining his arm.

‘Thank you, Nikandros,’ Laurent said.

Nikandros recovered from his surprise at being thanked, and hastily bowed out of the room, firmly shutting the door behind him. Laurent rose to fetch a cup of water.

‘Drink,’ he said, and Damen drank. Laurent returned the cup to the table, and hovered at the edge of Damen’s bed, uncertain. Then he began, slowly and with infinite care, to untie him.

‘Can you move the arm?’

He could. He demonstrated by reaching for Laurent’s hand.

Laurent relaxed. Just a fraction, just enough to smooth out the furrows between his brows. Damen thought he could breathe easier now. His shoulder still hurt, but it was a dull ache, not the burning agony he had endured for the past three weeks. His mind was clearer, too, although exhaustion weighed him down and threatened to pull him under again.

‘I hope,’ he said, very carefully, ‘you did not find your welcome wanting.’

Laurent laughed, a shaky, thin sound that subsided of its own. ‘We found the men who did this,’ he said. ‘Kastor’s friends. They were executed at dawn.’

Damen nodded, knowing he would not have condemned them to death. This was why they were already dead: Laurent knew that, too. 

 

He stayed in Ios for a month and a half. For the first three days, Damen slept and only woke in the mornings, to find Laurent had not moved an inch from his place by his side. There was something horrifying about watching the King of Akielos, who had defeated armies all but one-handedly, fall to his knees when he tried to rise from his sickbed; to watch Damen make his way down the corridor step by step, leaning against the wall, took more resilience than Laurent possessed.

Damen smiled at his concern and accepted his arm as support. ‘Healing is quick,’ he said, with the wisdom of a man who had been run through by his brother at the age of nine. ‘Recovery is slow.’

He took Laurent’s fussing with sweet patience, allowed him to worry and fret when they were alone. They were often alone. The King of Vere’s temper was short even with his most trusted companions, and Damen could not bear to watch him lash out. 

‘It is not Nikandros’ fault,’ he said, when Laurent had exploded at him for waking Damen from a weary sleep.

‘I know that,’ Laurent hissed, and only settled when Damen pulled him to the bed with him, to rest in his arms. Laurent sighed against his shoulder, still tense, and pretended he was only indulging him.

Slowly, Damen began to look himself again. The shadows around his eyes faded, the wound in his shoulder scarred and healed, and even before he had regained the muscle lost to fever, the sheer determination that kept him moving forward played its part in his recovery.

The first day he appeared to his people again, he wore his clothes arranged to hide the injury, and gave only a brief explanation of events. Rumours had spread, of course, of the King’s illness, and every child in Ios knew that those responsible had been killed for their crimes. Laurent sat beside him, wrist balanced on the arm of his chair, and dared anyone to doubt Damen’s power to rule.

 

‘You saved my life,’ Damen said the evening before Laurent left.

‘My physician saved your life,’ Laurent corrected.

Damen shook his head, drawing him close. ‘If you had not come,’ he said, ‘I would have gone. You kept me here.’ He meant this bed, this room, this life.

He watched Laurent take it in, turn the sentence over and over in his mind before he accepted it as truth. ‘All right,’ he said, and pressed a kiss to Damen’s palm. Damen worked the tension from his shoulders, one knot, one kiss at a time. He was alive, and Laurent was in his arms, and even if he left tomorrow, they had all the time in the world.


End file.
